Oceans

Life on our blue planet depends on healthy oceans, but recent reports warn that sea life faces the next mass extinction. Next to climate change, overfishing is the single greatest threat to marine biodiversity. Industrial fishing has reduced populations of large, predatory fish like tuna, cod and sharks by about ninety per cent in the last fifty years. Growing demand for seafood, wasteful fishing practices and mismanaged fish stocks and aquaculture operations are leading to broken links in marine food chains in Canadian waters and worldwide. Urgent action is needed to protect marine life and allow recovery. Greenpeace works to relieve pressure on ocean ecosystems and to establish a network of no-take marine reserves–ocean parks–covering 40 per cent of the world's oceans.

Greenpeace urges major canned tuna brands across the country to source only ocean-friendly tuna. Greenpeace also exposes brands unwilling to change their destructive ways. Tuna companies must stop sourcing tuna from overfished stocks and wasteful fisheries that kill far more than just the tuna in your can. Often sharks, rays, sea turtles and baby tuna from vulnerable stocks are caught through wasteful fishing methods. Much of the tuna on Canadian supermarket shelves is still caught by destructive methods, but a sea change is underway.Every year, Greenpeace ranks 14 of the largest tuna companies in Canada. See how they stack-up.

Greenpeace is calling on Canada’s major supermarkets to green how they source seafood and become ocean advocates. With sustainable seafood policies now in place with every major chain in Canada, Greenpeace pushes for an end to selling redlist seafood and irresponsible procurement practices. As the middlemen between consumers and seafood producers, supermarkets play a pivotal role in cleaning up the supply chain and pushing for positive change in our oceans.

The latest updates

Slogging through my post-holiday emails I came across an article about the fate of an Atlantic cod stock off Newfoundland. It doesn’t look good. In fact, according to model predictions performed by biologists at DFO, it’s down right...

We fertilize our gardens to help our plants grow, but fertilizing the oceans to stop climate change? It sounds as ridiculous as it is. Dumping tonnes of iron sulphate into the ocean in hopes of stimulating massive up-take of carbon...

As if it couldn’t get any worse with the poor southern resident orcas going into winter pretty well starving, but now we find out that the food they are eating is slowly poisoning them. According to a new study in the journal...

Thanks to President George Bush three national monuments in the Pacific will be created to protect the largest amount of ocean in the world to date. This is a truly rare opportunity for us to applaud the Bush administration, and remind us that...